For those of us that consider ourselves beer snobs, and even those that don’t, there are certain beers a nose tends to be turned up on. Coors Light, Budweiser and Natural Ice are just a few that come to my mind.

My friend Paul is a home brewer and considers himself a bit of a beer connoisseur, but was surprised recently when he rated Miller High Life as one of of his favorite beers during a blind taste test. He was at his family’s house and his step dad had him judge beers (mixed both craft and light domestics together) in a blind taste test.

My friends and I thought it was such a great idea we did it ourselves last weekend. Now we don’t have enough money to buy a bunch of craft beers for everyone to drink (there were seven of us) so instead we called it the (blank) Beer Taste Test and bought the cheaper beers in the store. The blank stands for a word I can’t repeat here, but it describes a bunch of beers we’re not big fans of as a collective and for purposes of this post we’ll call them “bargain basement beers.” For seven folks trying out about 2 oz. samples it came to about $10 – $12.

The beers consisted of Natural Ice, Miller High Life,Budweiser, Icehouse, Foster’s Premium Ale, Bud Light, Yuengling (most of us are a fan of this one), Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller Light and Budweiser.

We had piece of paper that we marked 1 – 10 on. After a sniff and a couple of tastes we rated each beer from 1 – 10 and described it to the rest of the group. At the end of all the tastings, the beers were revealed to us and we were all quite surprised with our answers. My husband Casey and I got the most right with 3 out of 10 beers if that gives you a hint on how hard this really is. And how surprising! Here is how I rated my beers, from highest to lowest:

1. Pabst Blue Ribbon (I thought it had a nice hoppy finish)

2. Natural Ice (I thought it had a nice consistent flavor)

3. Fosters Premium Ale (had a soapy smell at first but tasted okay)

4. Yuengling (Oh my beloved Yuenging, or so I thought. It had a pretty skunky finish)

5. Bud Light (Average but fine)

6. Budweiser (Light but had flavor)

7. Icehouse (Slightly watered down but still had flavor

8. Miller High Life (Comes on strong at first but peters out in the finish)

9. Coors Light (Tastes all right at first but finish really watered down)

10. And lastly, and surprisingly to me, Miller Lite. It was way watered down, with barely a hint that I may be drinking beer at all. This used to be my go-to beer years ago. The one, I more than not, had in my hand at parties and bars. I really thought I would rate it much higher.